Peopled with plausibly 200 million people, Nigeria is the
most populous country in Africa. With a
total GDP of $432.3 billion, Nigeria is the
biggest economy and market in Africa. Nigeria accounts for
82% of Africa’s ICT market and 29% of Africa’s Internet usage. Looks
like good news. However, the snag is that there’s patent proliferation of
counterfeit products in Nigeria and there’s no guarantee that the product (especially
luxury goods) you purchased is genuine. Counterfeiting is not only a Nigerian
problem, but also a global malaise. To put things in perspective, in Fiscal
Year 2020, the Department of Homeland Security reportedly seized over
26,000 shipments of counterfeit goods valued at over $1.3 billion at United
States borders. As a matter of fact, the American multinational e-commerce and
one of the world's most valuable brand, Amazon’s anti-counterfeiting efforts reportedly led to
the blocking of more than 10 billion suspected phony listings in 2020. Similarly,
in addition to erasing 74 cybercrime groups with 385,000 members selling
passwords, credit cards and hacking services, Facebook (now Meta) said it proactively removed 283
million pieces of Facebook content violating counterfeit or copyright
infringement rules and about 3 million on Instagram. According to European
Union's law enforcement agency, Europol, 86% of all counterfeits worldwide originated from
Mainland China and Hong Kong in 2015.
